Who Rules the World When No One Is Wise? The Ethical Vacuum Behind the U.S.–China Rivalry

 It began with that awkward handshake — Trump smiling too wide, Xi standing still. I watched it on my laptop one evening while the ceiling fan in Karachi hummed and the city lights flickered after another power cut.

In Munich, my daughter Fareha texted that they were keeping the heating low again. Baby Salar was asleep in his cot wearing a wool cap, though it was only October. She joked, “Baba, we live like monks with a mortgage.”

The handshake was supposed to calm markets. But what it really showed was a planet run by men who mistake showmanship for wisdom.

Maybe Fareha is right. Maybe we are governed by algorithms, not adults.

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When the Courts End at the Border

Inside countries we still pretend there are limits — laws, courts, the idea of justice. But between nations, no such thing exists. There is no referee, no father to say “enough.”

Trade wars, sanctions, embargoes — they are modern words for the oldest game of domination. A few months ago, I overheard a trader in Bolton Market muttering over shipping rates as if reciting a prayer. His profit depended on how two distant men smiled in Seoul.

That is what global order means now: one leader’s tantrum, another’s patience, and a shopkeeper in Karachi forced to double his prices overnight.

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The Moral Decay of Superpowers

Both Washington and Beijing talk about values. Both really mean leverage.

The United States has turned friendship into an investment — expendable when returns fall. Kissinger once said it was dangerous to be America’s enemy but fatal to be its friend. China, on the other hand, wraps power in the language of national humiliation and revenge. Two empires, two myths, one absence of conscience.

Trump’s tariffs and Xi’s stillness were not opposites; they were reflections in the same mirror. Power without empathy.

My son-in-law in Munich recently learned his firm would cut hours again because components from Shenzhen were delayed. One email from a supplier in Guangdong meant one less grocery trip that month. The empires never notice such arithmetic.

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Chimpanzees With AI

A reader wrote to me, “We are still on chimpanzee level.” I think he’s right. We have built machines that can imitate wisdom but not practice it.

China speaks of the “century of rejuvenation.” America chants about “freedom.” Both confuse destiny with dominance. And the rest of us, the middle nations, translate their ambitions into inflation and anxiety.

When Fareha told me they now measure baby formula by the scoop, it struck me how grand politics becomes intimate pain. That is globalization in 2025 — a sleepless mother counting grams, a father watching the news half a world away.

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The Century of Nobody’s Father

There was once a time when people believed in some moral North — the UN, human rights, a code larger than markets. Now it feels like those ideas have been sold for short-term gain. Institutions talk, missiles fly, currencies tremble.

When no one is wise, the market becomes God. Countries behave like corporations; citizens become data points. Artificial intelligence will only amplify the noise.

We are clever, not kind. Fast, not wise.

And yet, hope lingers in small places. In Salar’s laugh when Fareha video-calls from Munich. In Karachi’s evening breeze after the first rain. Maybe his generation will rebuild what ours has squandered — a sense of restraint, a touch of humility, a moral language larger than GDP.

Until then, we live in the century of nobody’s father.

When Ports Collapse, People Starve: The Forgotten Human Cost of Chabahar’s Shutdown

 

I keep seeing the same headlines: India’s gamble collapses, America pulls the plug, geopolitics of ports. Big words. Heavy words. But then I saw a comment under my last post that cut through all that noise. “Many people will lose their income after this route is blocked.”

That’s it. One sentence. And it hit me harder than all the billion-dollar figures.

Because behind every port, every corridor, every so-called “strategic gamble” are people who thought they had finally found a lifeline.

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A shiny port that promised jobs

When India sank money into Iran’s Chabahar port, it wasn’t just about bypassing Pakistan or outsmarting China’s Belt and Road. It was also about hope for thousands of people who live by the docks, drive the trucks, sell food to the sailors, or move goods across the borders.

A port isn’t just cranes and containers. It’s wages. It’s rent money. It’s food on a table.

Dock workers in Chabahar thought their sleepy town would become the next Dubai. Afghan traders saw a new way to reach markets without begging Pakistan for transit. Indian exporters dreamed of a fast track to Central Asia.

For a while, there was movement. Containers rolled in. Cargo ships docked. Truck convoys headed toward Afghanistan. You could almost hear the gears of trade grinding to life.

And now? Silence.

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The politics that crushed it

Why? Because Washington changed its mind.

For years, America tolerated Chabahar, even carved out sanctions exemptions for it, since it helped Afghanistan. But the minute geopolitics shifted — Russia, Ukraine, Trump’s White House swagger — the deal fell apart.

Suddenly, the billion-dollar project became untouchable. Indian companies froze investments. Shipping firms hesitated. Contractors packed up.

America called it strategy. India called it bad luck. Iran called it betrayal.

But what about the dockworker who just lost his only steady income?

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The invisible casualties

Think of it:

The Afghan trucker who bought a second-hand lorry on loan, betting on steady trips from Chabahar into Herat. Debt now crushes him.

The Iranian shopkeeper who stocked extra rice and tea for sailors and traders. His shelves sit heavy, unsold.

The Indian exporter who built contracts around that corridor. He’s back to paying higher costs, slower routes.

When we talk about routes being blocked, these are the people being blocked. Not just cargo. Not just steel and oil.

Humans.

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The great irony

And here’s the bitter twist: while Chabahar limps, China’s projects keep moving. Gwadar, just down the coast in Pakistan, is humming with Chinese money and construction.

So the same people who thought they were escaping dependency — Afghans from Pakistan’s chokehold, Iranians from sanctions, Indians from Beijing’s shadow — find themselves right back in the same place. Vulnerable. Waiting on decisions made thousands of miles away.

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What we forget when we chase “strategy”

I’ve been guilty of it too. Writing about Chabahar as India’s gamble, about Washington’s pivot, about Beijing’s encirclement. But that one comment reminded me: geopolitics isn’t played on maps. It’s played in stomachs.

The man whose children drop out of school because his truck loan defaulted — that’s geopolitics.

The woman who has to close her shop at the port — that’s geopolitics.

The migrant laborers who drift away after the construction stops — that’s geopolitics.

These are the invisible casualties of “blocked routes.”

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So what now?

Will Chabahar bounce back? Maybe. Deals shift, governments change, exemptions come and go. Ports don’t disappear overnight. But the trust — the fragile trust of ordinary people who once believed in the promise of trade — that takes longer to rebuild.

Maybe that’s what we never count in the spreadsheets: the lost faith.

Because once you burn a worker, a trader, a community like this, the next time you show up with promises of prosperity, they’ll hesitate. They’ve seen how quickly politics can erase a paycheck.

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I don’t have a neat conclusion. Just this: when ports collapse, people starve. And no one in Washington, Delhi, or Tehran will ever put that in their press release.

Maybe that’s the real cost of Chabahar’s collapse